Then he said Now we surely know each other, and she came from her mood to meet his with a laugh, If we don’t we’ve surely done shameful things! And they sat in the lithe of a heath-grown dyke and ate chocolate Robert had brought in his pocket, and Chris fell fast asleep as she sat, and awoke with Robert sitting still lest he wake her, one hand around her and under her heart, but far away from her in his thoughts, his eyes on the sailing winter below and his thoughts with the new year that waited their coming down through the hills in the Segget wynds.
CHRIS WATCHED THE coming of that Spring in Segget with her interests strange-twisted back on themselves, as though she relived that Chris of long syne, far from the one that had taken her place, that Chris of kirks and Robert and books—they sank from sight in the growing of the Spring, quick on the hills, on the upland parks, you saw the fields of Meiklebogs change as you looked from the window of that room in the Manse that John Muir had set with Blawearie gear. It was there you intended the baby be born, the only sign of insanity yet, said Robert, laughing, and helping you change.
He seemed to have altered too with the Spring, the black mood came seldom or never now, nor that red, queer cough that companioned it. You’d hear him of a morning go whistling away, under the yews, on some kirk concern, blithe as though the world had been born anew. It wasn’t only the coming of the baby that had altered him so and kindled his eyes, all the air of the country was filled with its rumour, that thing that awaited the country in May, when the Miners and others had threatened to strike. Robert said that more than a strike would come, the leaders had planned to seize power in May.
The red-ploughed lands steamed hot in the sun as Meiklebogs’ men drove slow their great teams in the steam of the waiting world of Spring, the rooks behind them, Chris stood still and watched, and remembered, and put her hand up to her heart, and then lower, by belly and thigh: and slow, under her hand, that shape would turn, May close and July coming closer now, she felt fit and well, contented, at peace.
Εwan knew now, he had stared one morning; and then asked if she was going to have a baby. Chris had said Yes, do you mind very much? and he had said No, but hadn’t kissed her that morning, she watched him go with a catch of breath. But by night he seemed to have got the thing over, he put cushions behind her when she sat at tea, grave, and with care, and Robert winked at her. Ewan saw the wink and flashed his cool smile; and they all sat silent in front of the fire, with its smouldering glow, they had no need to speak.
Then Maidie knew, as she watched Chris at work, and tweetered the news to some quean outbye, and the quean gasped Never! and told Ag Moultrie, the Roarer and Greeter, met in the street. And Ag had nearly a fit with delight, and before that night came down in Segget there was hardly a soul in both touns but knew the minister’s wife had taken at last—ay, and must be fell on with it, too, by her look, so the lassie Moultrie had said. Had Ag seen her? you’d ask, and they’d tell you Ay, she’d fairly done that, and Mrs Colquohoun had told the bit news to Ag Moultrie herself; and syne broke down and just Roared and Grat on Ag’s shoulder.
Old Leslie said ’twas Infernal, just, you’d have thought a minister would have more sense. He never had thought it decent in a minister to show plain to his parish he did that kind of thing; and he minded when he was a loon up in Garvock— Those nearest the door of the smiddy nipped out, Ake Ogilvie near was killed in the rush, and he found old Leslie habbering to himself, hammering at a horseshoe, and far off in Garvock. What’s up then, Leslie? Ake Ogilvie asked, and Leslie said What, have you not heard the news? and told of the thing that was on at the Manse, and might well have begun to tell of Garvock, but that Ake, the coarse brute, said Well, what of it? Didn’t your own father lie with your mother—the poor, misguided devil of a childe?
Syne out he went swaggering and met with John Muir, and asked if he’d heard what the scandal-skunks said? Muir gleyed and said Ay; and it made him half-sick, and Ake said the same, they were both of them fools, and cared nothing at all for a tasty bit news.
John Muir went home, never told his wife, she found out herself nearly three days late; and fair flew into a rage at that, to be so far behind with the news. Did you know the news of Mrs Colquohoun? she speired of John and he gleyed and said Ay. And she asked could he never tell her a thing, her that had to bide at home and cook, and wash and sew and mend all the time, with himself and two meikle trollops of daughters, working her hands to the very bone? And John said Well, it’s nothing to me if Mrs Colquohoun has been ta’en with a bairn—I’m not the father, as far as I know.
Mrs Muir reddened up, Think shame of yourself speaking that way in front of the lassies. Tooje was standing with her meikle mouth open, drinking it up, afore she could close it her mother took her a crack in the gape. Tooje started to greet and Ted in the garden heard the greeting, as aye she would do, and came tearing in, and started to greet to keep Tooje company; and John Muir got up with his pipe and his paper and went out to the graveyard and sat on a stone, and had a fine read: decent folk, the dead.
In the Arms Dite Peat said Wait till it comes. She’s the kind that takes ill with having a bairn—over narrow she is, she’ll fair have a time. I warrant the doctor’ll need his bit knives. Folk thought that an unco-like speak to make, he’d a mind as foul as a midden, Dite Peat: but for all that you went to the kirk the next Sabbath and took a gey keek at Mrs Colquohoun—ay, God! she fairly was narrow round there, more like a quean than a grown-up woman, with her sulky, proud face and her well-brushed hair, she’d look not so bonny when it came to her time.
Then Hairy Hogg heard it and minded the story of what Mr Mowat had said he would give—to take the minister’s wife with a bairn. You well may depend that was more than a speak. Folk had forgotten it but now they all minded, it was said in Segget it was ten to one the bairn wasn’t the minsiter’s at all, young Mr Mowat had been heard to say he’d given half of a whole year’s profits for lying with that proud-like Mrs Colquohoun. MacDougall Brown said ’twas a black, black sin, and he preached a sermon in the Square next Sabbath, about scarlet priesthoods living in shame; and everybody knew what he meant by that, his son Jock wabbled his eyes all around, and Mrs Brown shook like a dollop of fat; only Cis looked away and turned red and shy, and thought of Dod Cronin and his hands and lips.
The spinners didn’t care when the news reached them, though an unco birn came now to the kirk that had never attended a kirk before, the older men mostly, disjaskèd, ill-dressed, with their white, spinner faces and ill-shaved chins, like raddled old loons, and they brought their wives with them—the minister was fairly a favourite with them. So might he be, aye siding with the dirt and the Labour stite that the Cronins preached; and twice he had interfered at the Mills and forced Mr Mowat to clean out his sheds. But the younger spinners went to no kirk, just hung about of a Sabbath day, and snickered as a decent body went by, or took their lasses up to the Kaimes as soon as the Spring sun dried the grass.
Most of the gossip Chris heard of or knew, and cared little or nothing, folk were like that, she thought if you’d neither books nor God nor music nor love nor hate as stand-bys, no pillar of cloud to lead your feet, you turned as the folk of farm and toun—to telling scandal of your nearest neighbours, making of them devils and heroes and saints, to brighten your days and give you a thrill. And God knew they were welcome to get one from her, she found herself liking them as never before, kindled to new interest in every known face, seized again and again in the Segget wynds—looking at the rat-like little Peter Peat, at MacDougall’s bald head, at the lizard-like Mowat—with the startling thought, He was once a bairn! It nearly put you off having one sometimes; and then again you’d be filled with such a queer pity, as you passed, that Hairy Hogg would go in and say to his wife—That Mrs Colquohoun she goes by me and snickers! and his wife would say Well damn’t, do you want her to go by you and greet?
So April was here, with its steaming drills and the reek of dung in the Meiklebogs parks; and in Segget backyards a
scraich and chirawk as the broods of the winter gobbled their corn, you could hear the ring of the smiddy hammer across the still air right to the Manse—above it, continuous, the drum of the Mills. Young Mr Mowat had new orders on hand and most of the spinners were at work again. But early that week that he put them on Stephen Mowat came down to the Manse, with a paper in his hand and a list of names. He wanted Robert to join the list, the o.m.s., a volunteer army, that was being prepared all over the country to feed the country in the Miners’ strike. And he said that they didn’t always see eye to eye, him and Colquohoun, but that this was serious: you Jahly well couldn’t let a push like the miners dictate to the country what it should do. And he said that Rahly Robert must join, and Mrs Colquohoun as well, if she would; and he smiled at her charming, and showed all his teeth.
Robert said Well, Christine, what do you say? and Chris didn’t much care, for she didn’t much hope. Then she looked at Mowat, elegant, neat, in his London clothes, with his tended hair and his charming look; and the saggy pouches under his eyes. And it seemed she was looking at more than Mowat, the class that had made of the folk of Segget the dirt-hungry folk that they had been and were—made them so in sheer greed and sheer grab. You had little hope what the Miners could do, them or the Labour leaders of Robert, but they couldn’t though they tried make a much worse mess than Mowat and his kind had done, you knew. So you just said No; Robert smiled at Mowat. That’s Chris’s answer, a trifle abrupt. And I can’t help the o.m.s. myself—you see, I’ve another plan afoot. Mowat said that was Jahly, what was the plan? And Robert said Why, do all that I can do to hinder the o.m.s. or such skunks as try to interfere with the Strike.
Chris had never admired Stephen Mowat so much, he kept his temper, charming, polite, she and Robert watched him stride from the door, down under the yews, and they later heard he had gone to the Provost and gotten his help, and the same from Geddes, and the same from Melvin that kept the Arms. Near everybody that counted would help, except the spinners, the Manse, and Ake Ogilvie—Ake had told Mr Mowat they could hamstring each other, strikers and Government, for all that he cared. And neither would MacDougall Brown give his name, he said his living depended on spinners: and if all the world renounced its sin the cares of the world would be ended tomorrow.
And all the time he was saying this he was mixing sawdust under the counter, canny-like, in a bag of meal.
CHRIS PUT THE whole thing out of her mind, busied in making the baby’s clothes, busied in going long walks by herself, the last day in April she took Ewan with her, across by Mondynes, till they saw far off, crowning the hills, the roofs of Kinraddie. You were born over there twelve years ago, she thought aloud as they sat to rest, Ewan with his head cupped up in his hands, his arms on his knees, his black-blue hair rumpled, untidily tailed, in the glow of the sun. He said, Yes, I know, and then looked at her sudden—but I say! I never really thought of that…. Or anyway, never as I thought just now. She asked how was that, and he looked down the Howe. Well, that I once was a part of you; though, of course, I know all about how babies come.
And for almost the first time in years he seemed troubled, her boy, the fruit of herself, so cool, so kind and sure and so stony-clear, troubled to a sudden, queer brittle pity. Mother! And he looked at her, then away, then came and cuddled her tight for a moment, his arms round her throat Chris nearly was stifled: but she didn’t move, didn’t say a word at that strange embracing on the part of Ewan.
And May and to-morrow waited their feet as they turned back quiet up the Segget road.
EWAN IN HIS BED; in the May-time dark Chris wandered the sitting-room of the Manse, looking again and again from the window at the mist that had come and grew thicker each minute. Beyond her vision the yews, the hedge: she could see but a little space from the window, a space translit by a misty star, the lights far up in Segget House.
What had happened to Robert—had he been in time?
And at last she could bear it no longer, went out, into the hall and put on her coat, and opened the door and went down through the path, through the slimy, slow crunch of the shingle, mist-wet. A light gleamed faint in the house of John Muir and a dog barked loud from old Smithie’s shed as he heard her footsteps pass in the mist, it came draping its cobwebs across her face, she put up her hand and wiped off the globes, from her lashes, and stopped and listened on the road. Nothing to be heard, the mist like a blanket, had Robert come up with the spinners in time?
They had gone to blow up the High Segget brig, a birn of the spinners and one of the porters, the news had been brought to the Manse by John Cronin, panting—They’ve gone to blow up the brig and prevent the trains that the blacklegs are running reaching beyond this, or south from Dundon. Robert had jumped up—When did they go? and Cronin had said Ten minutes ago, I heard of it only now in the Old Toun, this’ll mean the police and arrest for us all. Robert had said Oh, damn the fools, and their half-witted ploys—blowing up brigs! Right, I’ll be with you, and hadn’t waited his coat, had told Chris not to worry and kissed her, and ran, long-striding down through the shingle, Cronin at his heels and the mist coming down.
Where were they now, what had happened at the brig?
She pressed on again, that fear for an urge—a fool to be out, maybe Robert would miss her. The mist was so thick she could hardly see a thing on the other side of the Wynd, she kept the leftward wall and held down, past the locked-up shop of little Peter Peat, the shop of the Provost locked up as well, and Dite Peat’s as well, all three of them specials enrolled by Mowat to help Simon Leslie. But the station folk and the spinners were out, so Robert had told her, and here in Segget, as all over the country, the Strike held firm.
Had he and Cronin reached the brig in time?
Now she was down in the Square, so she knew, the lights of the Arms seeped up through the mist, the Arms crowded with spinners as usual, few of them knew of the thing at the brig, John Cronin had said the folk who had gone to blow up the place were no more than boys, and daft at that, with their blasting-powder gotten or thieved from the quarry at Quarles.
As Chris crossed the Square she met in the mist two men who were holding up to East Wynd, Sim Leslie was one, and a man with a brassard, one of the specials, she thought it Dite Peat. They peered in her face and Sim Leslie coughed, and the man with the brassard laughed a foul laugh. Chris felt her blood go cold at that laugh, she heard them engage in a mutter of talk as she hurried down the road to the station.
There were lights down there, but still as the grave, she stood and looked down, her heart beating fast. And so, as she stood, slowly, quietly, under her heart her baby moved. She gasped a little, she must go more slow, she shouldn’t be out in the mist at all. Robert and Cronin must have reached them in time.
But even yet she could not go back. She stood and listened in the mist and heard the fall of it on the grass, on the hedge, beyond the wall where she stood and leaned—soft, in a feathery falling of wet, blanketing sound away from her ears. She ought to go home, but how could she, unsure?
In that minute, far to the south the mist suddenly broke and flamed: she stared: the flame split up through the mirk from the ground. Then there came to her ears the crack and crinkle of such explosion as she’d heard before up in the Mounth-side Quarles quarry. She knew what it meant; and started to run.
Beyond the railway lines was the path that wound by the lines till it reached Segget Brig. Here the hawthorns brushed her face and the grass whipped wetly about her legs as she ran, not thinking, trying hard not to think, to run fleetly, and gain the Brig, as she must—Robert was there—Oh, and those fools!
The second explosion laid hand on the night and shook the mist as a great hand might. Then it died, and Chris found the true dark had come, it had seeped through the mist like spilt ink through paper, and she couldn’t run now, but walked and stumbled, and heard no more for it seemed an hour.
Till far behind her there rose a whistle, a long-drawn blast remote in the night.
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p; She stopped at that and turned about, a whin-bush lashed her face as she turned and then stood listening and looking beside her. And far away north up the side of the Mounth a line of lights twinked suddenly bright, and moved and slowed and came to a stop.
Clenched hand at her throat, for that seemed to help, she gasped and stared at that cluster at halt—some Dundon train that had halted at Carmont, in five minutes more it would be in Segget, and the brig was down, and it wouldn’t know—
Running again she felt that change, slow and dreadful and sick in her body, her arms held out as she kept the path; and she cried to the thing unborn in her womb, Not now, not now; and it moved again. Then up the line she heard the skirl of the starting train, its windows flashed, it purred from sight as it climbed through the woods—she never could do it, try though she might!
Yet, so at last, running, she did; and gained the road with the station below. Down there was a flurry and scurry of lights, behind on the road a scurry of feet. She turned at that sound, saw a drift of men, she seemed to know one: and cried out Robert!
THE NIGHT quietened away in a mist of faces and a kindled lantern and Robert’s voice. So later Chris minded, and then the next hours closed suddenly up as a telescope closes. One minute she was standing, her teeth in her lip, harkening Robert tell how he’d gained the brig, just in time, they’d done no more than test off the powder, he and Cronin had stopped them at that; and the next she was up in the Manse with Robert, as she stood in the hall and he closed the door the hall rose up and spun twice round her head, she stared at the grandfather clock in the hall, for a minute she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Something suddenly flooded her mouth, she sopped the stuff with her handkerchief—red, and saw as last thing Robert’s startled scowl as he leapt to catch her; and then he quite vanished.
A Scots Quair Page 48